BrusselKale Is The Most Upsetting Hybrid Food Yet

From the Cronut™ to the Ramen Burger, food mashups hit big last summer and almost immediately jumped the shark. With monstrosities like ramen pizza and the unstoppable iterations of the Cronut™ -- Cro-Nots, Doissants and Brioughnuts and perhaps worst of all, the Crogel -- we thought the trend might have been laughed off the food stage. How wrong we were. People just can't seem to resist ruining perfect foods by combining them into one illogical whole. People also can't resist capitalizing on a food trend, or even better, capitalizing on two trends in one. Case in point: BrusselKale.

USA Today reported on July 10 that a new hybrid vegetable called BrusselKale is expected to hit U.S. supermarkets nationwide this fall. British vegetable seed company Tozer Seeds has been developing BrusselKale for 15 years by traditional crop breeding. The vegetable is not genetically modified, Tozer says. Hybrid fruits and vegetables aren't new, and they're not automatically a bad thing either. Broccolini was introduced in 1999 to great fanfare, and the Honey Crisp apple is a hybrid fruit that has seamlessly entered the market. (It was introduced by the University of Minnesota in 1960 as a cross of Macoun and Honeygold apples.) Combining Brussels sprouts and kale, however, seems like a desperate attempt to profit off the trends of the moment.

The hybrid vegetable is already available in some grocery stores, but it's currently going by a few different names, including BrusselKale and Lollipops. On Tozer's website it's listed as "Flower Sprout" and it's also appearing as "Kalettes." After 15 years of breeding the vegetable, you'd think they could have sorted out the name before putting it on the market. Today reports Tozer Seeds is relaunching the vegetable under the name BrusselKale this fall.

According to the Daily Mail, Tozer Seeds says BrusselKale has a more subtle flavor than Brussels sprouts, and was developed with texture in mind, so that it would be suitable for sautéing but also for eating raw.

No matter what BrusselKale tastes like, and no matter what they call it, we wish everyone would just leave our kale and Brussels sprouts alone. Sure these "hipster" vegetables are overblown trends, but they're popular for a reason. They're nutritious, tasty, versatile and great canvases for a variety of flavors. These vegetable are great on their own -- we don't think they need to be ruined by joining forces.

BrusselKale, go away. We've already had enough of you.




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